First off Pinky kidded. She had twins, one buck and one doe. (Read about the birth here.)
Dwopple
Songbreeze
Wot Wot
Laddie Buck
Dontcha Know
Bescarum
Trisscar
the Green T Goatherd
Deuteronomy 8:7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a fertile land. |
This year all three of our does kidded. Between them they had seven kids, four bucks and three does. First off Pinky kidded. She had twins, one buck and one doe. (Read about the birth here.) DwoppleDwopple is Pinky's first kid, her buck. He is just like his sire, Pecan - lazy, friendly, naughty, and sweet. Also like Pecan, Dwopple has rather droopy ears. The farthest up he can get them is about straight out. Dwopple and Pinky together terrorize the other baby goats, but sometimes Dwopple will ram into Pinky instead of the kid. Dwopple is as friendly as a bottle baby, without all the sucking bottle babies do. And he loves selfies. SongbreezeSongbreeze, or Song, is Pinky's doe kid. She is more like Pinky than Pecan, but unlike Pinky and very like Pecan she loves to be held and petted. With Pinky you must scratch her just so at the right time and she must be in the correct mood and she's going to pretend not to like it anyway. Song (or maybe just all does) was smart at birth and nursed right away. Dwopple took two hours to nurse. Next Jenny kidded. She somehow managed to pop out triplets a day after her due date on February 4. I say "somehow managed" because I was commiserating with a friend on the third (her due date) about her being barely big enough to have a single kid in there. She had two bucks and a doe, and she also somehow managed to have them while I wasn't there even though we stayed home the whole day. (The story of her kidding is in this post.) Wot WotWot is Jenny's oldest triplet, and the only doe. At the time of birth she was the same size as her next youngest brother, Lad, but she got the Nigerian body size from Pecan and is now about 2/3 Lad's size. Wot is similar to Rosebud, one of Jenny's kids from last year. Both are chamoisee (Wot's is softer because of the Nigerian side) and they have very similar temperaments and facial expressions and markings. Laddie BuckLaddie Buck (also known as Lad) is Jenny's middle trip. He didn't have the silly streak that all three other bucklings born here have had. He latched onto the teat and started sucking upon arrival. Lad is a really big goat, about as big as Jenny's full Alpine twins were at birth. He is grey roan colored. Lad is a big baby. Song, less than half his size, bosses him around so much it's a shame. Lad also isn't the brightest goat ever. He is always getting left behind by the herd and then he cries until rescued or he finally gets a move on and catches up with them. Dontcha KnowDontcha is Jenny's runt. He had a rough start but he pulled through after lots of TLC, medicine, and staying with Jenny at night when the others got locked up. He has a long, slightly shaggy coat and a large frame that he doesn't know what to do with. He was pretty clumsy at first. Now he gets locked up at night and is a really healthy goat. He is the first goat on the farm to have an abscess, an abominable thing. It is perfectly harmless to the goat, but the pus is nasty, and it's not so fun to put ointment on. He's been really good with treatment so far, though. Next up and last we had Honey, without a due date. (Side note: no due dates is for the birds. Perfectly awful. Absolutely detestable. Horrid.) She kidded the twenty fifth, three weeks after Jenny. She somehow managed two black kids, one buck and one doe. (Birth story here.) The "somehow managed" is because there is absolutely no way she could have had black kids. She and Pecan have no black lineage as far as I know and black is recessive. BescarumScarum is a very sweet goat. He was fairly big as a newborn and I had to help Honey out a little and pull him. It took him a little longer than normal to latch, but he did in the end. As a newborn he and his sister were extremely playful. Usually kids that age wobble around and nurse and sleep, but not these two. They were bouncing around and falling over. TrisscarTriss was a good bit smaller than Sacrum and did not take her precious time as he did with coming into the world. She was there in an instant. Triss is a sweet little gal, a mini me of her dam when it comes to temperament. She has a wild streak, but she loves attention. By Suzanne Tyler
the Green T Goatherd
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We installed two new beehives recently! They were packages, and we put them into Dad's new top bar beehives that he built. Here are the packages: Dad opened up the packages. On the first package, he accidentally dropped the queen cage and it disappeared into the mass of bees. I fished it out. It was kind of hard to actually see the queen in the cage because there were so many bees on it. Pouring bees! As Dad pointed out, whoever thought pouring bees would work? We checked the hives the next day to see how things were going. The white hive was super active and buzzy around the queen, the yellow hive was much more calm, and the opinions and interpretations among us concerning their behavioral differences are a little varied... so we'll keep you posted on the proceedings of our first two top bar hives! Written by Jane Honey was bred by Pecan, our little bottle buckling who is no longer on the farm, but he sure left his mark. In seven little miniatures. The last two came on February 25 and their dam is Honey. I didn't have a due date for her. Just a vague "sometime after Jenny, I think." If I had looked in my records I would have found written on September 21, "I think Pecan might have bred Honey today" and then I would have had a possible due date. If that was her due date, she kidded a few days late. Honey looked close to kidding all afternoon on February 25. The problem was, we were going out that night. Thankfully we had to come home early and when we got to the barn Honey was definitely in labor. She had chosen her spot and was having contractions. She wasn't very far along, we had maybe 10-15 minutes until things really got serious. We got fresh straw and fresh water for Honey and fed the rest of the goats. At that point we decided to stick around; things seemed imminent. Honey is super vocal. She yelled with single every push. No, she yelled at least twice per push. After she was pushing on a pair of hooves and a nose for fifteen minutes or so, I pulled on the hooves while she was pushing and we got the head out. Then she decided she was done pushing and started staring into space. Really helpful, Honey. We got the kid out; it was all black except for a little white here and there. It was a buck, and after Honey got out of her trance she fell in love with him. I thought maybe she would only have one, he was fairly big, but kid number two came flying out at the speed of lightning. Despite the fact that it came with speed, Honey managed to get in a good holler. Like I said, Honey is really noisy. Thankfully Honey loved her second kid as much as the first (most of her licks landed between them) unlike Pinky who paid all her attention to the first kid and totally ignored the second (she did learn to like it later). This kid turned out to be a doe, the same coloring as her brother except less white. We named the buck Bescarum and the doe Trisscar, Scarum and Triss for short. It took a while to decide for sure because if we named them those names Jane would have named all the kids this year. I chose the naming scheme for next year to make up for that fact. Here are some pictures. Scarum, the buckling: Triss, the doeling: Honey's udder has turned out great, especially when you compare it to Jenny's! Her teats are bigger and she has better attachments. I always thought she would be our worst milker- the way Jenny can act like the food is invisible and know exactly how to kick in such a way to neatly take your hands off her teats and land her hoof in the bucket, you'd have thought Honey would be much worse. She will do anything to escape having even her back legs touched, but when we got Honey on the stand she actually eats her hay (Pinky just doesn't eat it and Jenny pushes it out of the trough) and if she does kick she just does a little tap without getting her hoof an inch off the ground. She just squats a little and eats away. And she is extremely easy to milk because of big teats- she is a first freshener and her teats are bigger than Jenny's, who is a third freshener. Honey's giving a quart a day and I'm expecting it to go up some as she goes around the lactation curve. When Scarum and Triss were still really wobbly, Laddie Buck, one of Jenny's triplets, noticed how wimpy the competition and how great the colostrum at Honey's udder was. Honey wasn't out of the mother-everything-in-sight stage that sets in about a week before kidding, so she hadn't learned how to kick or jump over kids yet. We had to put her and her shadows into a different pen for a few days. She was pretty unhappy, but there wasn't much of a choice. Now she is out with the herd enjoying the woods and kicking Lad occasionally. Both kiddos are doing well, it seemed the moment they hit the ground they were jumping around and playing. They are extremely frisky kids. Their momma doesn't like the whole nursing business, she's always hated having her teats touched, at first she just squated a little and looked unhappy while letting them nurse, but she is getting better. She's a good mother and sniffs their bums while they nurse, too, just like her own mother does. Here are a few more pictures... By Suzanne Tyler
the Green T Goatherd Jenny, our Alpine third freshener, had kids! Our first triplets! Their names are Wot Wot, Laddie Buck, and Dontcha Know (this year's kids are themed after the Redwall books). Jenny was bred by Pecan, our naughty fence-jumping little Nigerian buck who was sold due to misbehavior. During pregnancy, Jenny was rather thin and she never got quite so miserably enormous as she did last year when she had twins. Because of this, Suzie thought she would only have one kid. Jenny's labor began in the morning-- we think, anyway. She was being restless, stuck to the woods in the pasture alone, and had other such signs of labor. We checked her often, but nothing seemed to be happening so we lost interest and went on with our day. Later that afternoon I went down to check her and-- she had a brown kid. I took off my jacket and used it to clean out its nose and mouth so it could breathe and by then Jenny began pushing again. She pushed out a dark buck, I knelt to clean him up, and Jenny started pushing yet again. I ran to the house and got Suzie. When we returned she had pushed the third and final kid out. Wot Wot, the doe, was first, Laddie Buck was second, and Dontcha Know was third. I had told Suzie months before that if we ever had triplets we should name them the three most common phrases uttered by hares in Redwall. I had completely forgotten about my idea when the trips were born. It was Suzie who brought it back up and that's what we named them. Since then, the kids have been doing pretty well, with a few minor incidents. The triplets are hard on their mother, always fighting over the two teats on her udder. Poor Jenny's udder is in bad shape and we have to give her massages and udder balm. Dontcha, who is a little runty, was sick for a while, but he seems to be over it now. When Honey kidded, Laddie quickly discovered that the competition for Honey's udder was much easier to handle than fighting with siblings his same size for his own mother's udder. For a few days Honey just let him! Thankfully, she has finally learned who her kids are and she kicks Laddie off. Left to right, top to bottom: Jenny and Dontcha; Laddie at the water buckets; Wot being adorable; Dontcha eating alfalfa; Laddie eating alfalfa; Wot on the milking stand
We have had three new arrivals in the last week at the Green T! First came Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen was born on Sunday, the 24th, at 10:46am, right after the big snowstorm. She weighed 7lb 7oz, and was 19.5 inches long. She has lots of brown hair. Here are some pictures of her: Then Pinky kidded. Finally. On Thursday morning, I thought her ligs were softer than usual, and when I noticed that I saw that her udder was HUGE! This huge: And she had discharge.... It seemed like her udder had gone big overnight, because the last time I had given her a decent checkup was Saturday, and then we had Mary Ellen, and, well, we were really busy. It had been four days since I checked for signs of kidding, so it seemed she had gotten big really quickly. Early afternoon, Jane said she was restless and by herself in the barn. I went out to check her, and she had made herself a nest and settled down some. So that probably meant she was just past early labor, or else she was acting really weird. So Jane, James, and I headed to the barn and were there when she kidded, first a buckling, and then a doeling. I was surprised at how big they were for a small first freshener's babies. They were as big as Pecan (their sire) was at a day, and he was from an experienced doe. Here is a picture: The doeling is on the left, and the buckling is on the right. Aren't they adorable? Pinky just loves them. At first we couldn't get the buckling to latch, but he finally did, after I was ready to give up and give him a bottle. Pinky wasn't much help, because she wanted both of them under her nose being licked. If Jane or I helped them nurse, well, she would back up until they were in front of her again. She kept backing herself against the wall. We finally put her in the stand to make her be still. We named them Songbreeze and Dwopple. Here are pictures of Dwopple, the buckling: And Song, the doeling: Next up we have Jenny, who was due to kid yesterday. She went early for her previous owners, but late for us last year. She looks really close, no ligs, keeping to herself, change in attitude, etc. Then is Honey, and I think she is due right after Jenny, but I didn't write down her last heat cycle, so she could kid in one week, or one month, depending on when she feels like it.
By Suzanne Tyler, the Green T Goatherd This is Pinky. Pinky is a Nigerian Dwarf goat. I got her along with her brother Binky. Binky is the wether that came to replace Sweet Gum, the Alpine wether that died. The breeder sent us a picture of the two together and asked if we could consider getting them both. I said "Awww, they're so cute, it's too bad we can't get her." Jane said, "We're getting her!" So we jumped into Nigerians, without much more than a 12-hour notice. This is Pinky right after she came home. She was really small. This is Pinky's brother, Binky. He loves to be held. Like all Nigerians, Pinky has an attitude, the "Nigerian Attitude." Pinky is Jane's goat. Okay, the papers say "Owned by Suzanne Tyler," but still, Pinky is Jane's. Pinky loves to be pampered. Of course, she has to be pampered in a certain way, and at a certain time, and so on and so forth. Every now and then, I carefully scratch her behind the ears and am careful not to annoy her, but Jane is pretty much Pinky's full-time pamperer. When Jenny kidded, Pinky got in a huff, and Jane said, "Poor thing, she feels her position as most popular and pampered goat is endangered," and Jane goes off to sit with Pinky, who has her ears back, because she has been insulted. For the month of June, Pinky went off with Iron, a friend's buck, and a perfectly good match for Pinky. Of course, Pinky refused to settle, and came home unbred. We thought she was bred, though, so we weren't watching for heat cycles from her, and the little buck named Pecan, who can easily get through the fence and who was later sold as a result, bred her some time this summer. This is Pecan as a baby, and then the day before we sold him. Apparently, Pinky is a very grumpy pregnant goat. There is now no pleasing her. If she ever knew how to lead, well, not any more. She hates having her picture taken. This is her most recent picture. I must have set her up for it a bazillion times, and she still hunched up her back and made her topline look horrible, yet Jane still pampers her. She does have a cute little udder, though. It's a little bigger now than when this picture was taken. She is getting noticeably bigger in the stomach area. This picture was taken right after morning feeding one day, so she didn't have a whole day of eating behind her. Her stomach has widened considerably since this picture was taken about two weeks ago. Here is another more recent picture. She is on the far right. The black, tan, and white goat (second from the left) is Hickory, Pecan's replacement. He turned out like Pecan did, often jumping fences, but at least we were able to elastrate him. We have decided not to get another Nigerian buck for a while. This is Pinky this summer. She was a good deal slimmer. Here she is during the February 2015 snowstorm. Binky jumped the fence to be in with his sister as the snow began to fall. The snow makes them look rather dirty! Two days ago, Pinky lost her ligaments (or ligs) and her tail head raised, her lady parts got puffy, she had discharge, etc. I thought, "She is going to kid really soon. Maybe within a few hours." Well, the next morning (yesterday) came, and her ligs had hardened some. I knew that does could loose their ligs off and on for up to two weeks before kidding, but I could almost touch thumb and forefinger around her tail head. In the afternoon, her ligs turned to total mush again, and she still didn't kid. That night, right after feeding I saw her arch her back, a sure sign of labor! (See our other goat-kidding blogpost.) So we put Binky in with her, because Binky just had to be there for her kidding, and came out to check a few hours later. There were no kids and no more back arching. Oh well, maybe it will be tomorrow morning, but Pinky was the same as ever: no ligs, discharge occasionally, tail head raised, puffy and relaxed lady parts, change in behavior (she now is being very friendly and sweet, just like before pregnancy). These are all sure signs that kids are going to be here within hours, but of course Pinky has not kidded! She has certainly read the Doe's Code Of Honor! Our other goat followed the Doe's Code perfectly. I think she rubbed off on Pinky. The Doe's Code of Honor The doe's secret code of honor is as old as goats themselves and is the species' best kept secret. No doe shall ever kid before its time. Its time being determined by the following factors: 1- No kid shall be born until total chaos has been reached by all involved. Your owner's house must be a wreck, their family hungry and desperate for clean clothes, and their social life nonexistent. 2- "Midwives" must reach the babbling fool status before you kid out. Bloodshot eyes, tangled hair and the inability to form a sentence mean the time is getting close. 3- For every bell, beeper, camera or whistle they attach to you, kidding must be delayed by at least one day for each item. If they use an audio monitor, one good yell per hour will keep things interesting. 4- If you hear the words, "She's nowhere near ready. She'll be fine while we're away for the weekend," Wait until they load the car, then begin pushing! 5- Owner stress must be at an all time high! If you are in the care of someone else, ten to fifteen phone calls a day is a sign you're getting close. 6- When you hear the words "I can't take it anymore!" wait at least three more days. 7 -You must keep this waiting game interesting. False alarms are mandatory! Little teasers such as looking at your stomach, pushing your food around in the bucket and then walking away from it, and nesting, are always good for a rise. Be creative and find new things to do to keep the adrenaline pumping in those who wait. 8- The honor of all goats is now in your hands. Use this time to avenge all of your barn mates. Think about your friend who had to wear that silly costume in front of those people. Hang onto that baby for another day. OH, they made him do tricks too! Three more days seems fair. Late feedings, the dreaded diet, bad haircuts, those awful wormings can also be avenged at this time. 9- If you have fulfilled all of the above and are still not sure when to have the kids, listen to the weather forecast on the radio that has been so generously provided by those who wait. Severe storm warning is what you're waiting for. In the heart of the storm jump into action! The power could go out and you could have the last laugh. You have a good chance of those who wait missing the whole thing while searching for a flashlight that works! 10- Make the most of your interrupted nights. Beg for food each time someone comes into the barn to check you. Your barn mates will love you as the extra goodies fall their way too. Author Unknown Here are some more pictures of Pinky. She was pregnant in this one, but not noticeably. Here she is eating kitchen scraps. Pinky is acting annoyed in this one. Here she is on the spool. She doesn't get up there much anymore because of her large girth. (While Jenny and Honey are called huge or big around, Pinky is called large of girth.) By Suzanne Tyler
the Green T Goatherd When our milker, Jenny, kidded, we were in a terrible fix because we had no way to disbud, or dehorn, the kids. Yes, we had ordered a disbudding iron, but Hoegger ended up being out of stock, plus the fact that for the first time disbudding we wanted someone to do it for us and show us how. I really didn't want to screw up our kids' horns. My Alpine buck has scurs (horns that didn't grow right after a poor disbudding) and let me tell you, they are a big problem. And we had called the vet. They said the kids would be fine if disbudded at two or three weeks, and to give them a call then to make an appointment. But I called a friend, too. She said she had already been there and done that with disbudding kids late. All the kids she disbudded at three weeks grew horns or scurs, even after repeated disbudding. The vet probably didn't want frantic goat owners, and never saw the results of a late disbudding. Finally, a friend told mom that Papa John of Papa John's Goat Farm disbuds her kids. I called him and arranged to have both of our kids disbudded the next morning. After the kids were disbudded, he asked if we were trying to sell our kids. We said yes. He wanted one. He had had a full Alpine, but she died, and now he only had Mini Alpines (Nigerian Dwarf x Apline, they can actually be registered with the Mini Dairy Goat Association!). We said we would trade him one of the kids for a Nigerian Dwarf buck that we could later breed to our goat Pinky and any of her doelings that we retain this fall when she kids. And BAM, just like that, I had the buckling I had been looking for, and Papa John had an Alpine. Dad says that he feels like having goats is just a great big game of cards, always "wheeling and dealing." At the time, Papa John still had three does to kid, so he said he would give us a call when we could come over to choose our buckling. We ended up leaving the kid he chose (Rosebud) at their farm, because Papa John wanted to bottle raise her. In the car on the way home with only one goat, Dad, Jane and I were scheming how we could break the news to mom. We had known that leaving a goat behind would not be a hit, but nothing we said had moved Papa John into letting us take her home and bring her back later. Us: She's on her mom right now, how about we bring her back when she's weaned? Papa John: No, I've seen it happen many times. She might not drink from the bottle today, but she will get hungry and by tomorrow she will be on the bottle well. Us: I haven't tattooed her yet! I'll take her home and do that and then bring her back. Papa John: We don't do that stuff, it's on the papers, but most of our goats aren't tattooed, they don't really need it. Us: Mom and the kids won't be happy when we come home without Rosebud! Papa John: They can come and visit her. We decided that the best course of action would be to draw long faces and tell mom that Rosebud hadn't made it. None of us knew that much about disbudding, so we were pretty sure that she would believe us. The problem was that none of us could draw a long enough face. Dad went in the house with Dahlia (our remaining kid). I don't know how he broke it to mom, because I was still standing at the back door, trying to draw a face long enough to go in and not ruin dad's joke when she came out complaining, "And I didn't even get to kiss her goodbye!" About a week later, I received a call from Papa John that we could come over to choose our buckling. We went and chose a super-cute little guy and later named him Pecan. We discussed the possibility of taking Pecan home before weaning because he didn't have to wait to be wethered, but opted against it because he would need botte-feeding three to four times a day when very young. Then, last Sunday, I had a terrible scare. I was keeping very close track of all of the goats after losing my Alpine wether, Sweet Gum. Dahlie had scours. Horror of horrors. Icky, nasty, drippy, sticky diarrhea. And it had come on very fast. Saturday morning she was fine, Saturday night she was off grain and had SCOURS. I was scared to high heaven. Sweet Gum had gone down fast. Dahlie could be dead the next morning, if it was the worst kind of coccidia (a parasite). Well, I gave her an adult-sized dose (yes, a full tablespoon) of Molly's Herbals wormer formula #1, and Molly's Herbals immune boosting tincture. Maybe a double-dose of that. I was seriously scared. I emailed Papa John, who had disbudded our kids. We took Dahlia over to their farm Sunday afternoon. I guess I had really been imagining things. They said she didn't need the shot, just to get her back on a regular feed schedule. We had been busy Friday night/Saturday morning, so we had left Dahlia with her mom overnight, instead of locking them away from each other and milking in the morning. We had also been on an unreliable feed source whose feed varied per bag, and we had just run out of feed from one bag and started in on a new one. Thus Dahlia's scours. The next morning, on the old schedule of milking, Dahlia's hind end was perfectly clean. But back to Papa John's place. We decided to take Pecan home. He only needed two bottles a day. In the car, Jane, Dad, and I were scheming how we could tell mom. Again. We could walk into the house with Pecan and see the reaction. We could just go in and explain, but that would not be very fun. We finally decided that dad would go in the back driveway, so they wouldn't see or hear the car, drop Jane and me, with the goats, at the goat pen, and see how long it would take mom and the little ones to see whom we had brought home. We were dropped off at the goat pen, dad went up to the house, all according to the plan. When John came out of the house shouting "My bucky, my bucky!" Jane and I thought dad had gone and told them. So when mom came out (I presume to see Dahlia) Jane called, "Ebony is being really good, but we might need to put Binky in with the does." Mom squealed (yessiree, she did) and came running down to the bucks' pen to see Pecan, along with the rest of the kids. So mom (and James, John and Caroline) had two big surprises this kidding season. Here are some pictures of Pecan. By Suzanne Tyler, goatherd, milkmaid
As previously mentioned in the newsletter, we had guineas. Yes, they are blue. Very blue. They really get around, too. Once they went halfway up the road to one of our neighbor's house and another time they went halfway down the road to another neighbors' house.They can fly much higher and much farther than the chickens can. Well, okay, except for that one guinea that pretty much never flies except to get on the roost at night. No idea why. She just... doesn't. Her friends go flying off without her and she gets so upset and makes a huge ruckus. One thing that the guineas can do well is make a ruckus. It is deafening. The people we got them from said that they would roost in the trees. That is exactly what they do. They sleep in the trees. The people we got them from also said they would lay eggs in the spring. We never found any guinea nests. Then our neighbor decided to tell us to keep our guineas off her property. We didn't want to pen them up, that is just cruel, so we gave them away to a friend. Catching guineas is hard. Very hard. The dogs caught the first one. The guinea couldn't fly because its feathers were wet because it was raining. Thanks Duke and Max! We caught the other three at night while they were roosting using a long piece of pipe and some rope. The male guinea was the hardest to catch. Boy did he now just how to avoid the rope! Getting rid of the guineas was very sad as we all enjoyed them. Oh well. Written by Jane
Last Sunday, on March 22, Jenny had the first kids ever on the Green T! Here is how it went. We thought before we left for church in the morning that Jenny was getting close, because she was sticking right around the barn and arching her back (I had never read that this was a sign, but since I had never seen her do it, I assumed it was a sign she was close..). I wasn't sure though, and didn't let myself hope too much, because she had been giving us false alarms for eleven days (we thought her ligs were gone, turns out they weren't gone all the way, teeny bits of discharge here and there, etc). So we left for church, and didn't really expect kids. We went to a friend's house for lunch, so we were back around three o'clock. All eyes were turned to the goat pen, and sure enough Pinky was bucking a kid. Jane ran in and nabbed that kid, and I went to the barn to find Jenny, because if the kid Jane had gotten was her only kid, she would have been up there protecting it from Pinky. When I got to Jenny there was a kid lying down behind her. I got that one. We confirmed that they were both girls, that they could nurse, and I gave mama some water and some alfalfa hay. Both kids were doing great, wagging tails, nursing often, healthy poop, etc., but now we had to deal with Pinky. She was not going to accept those kids if she had anything to say about it. We decided to put Honey and Pinky in a separate, temporary inclosure. (We have two permanent inclosures and one temporary.) Next thing we knew, Honey and Pinky were parading up the driveway. I went down to check the fence and there was a large branch fallen on it, weighing down the fence. We got the branch out of the way and locked Pinky in one side of the barn for the night. Honey was really sweet to the kids and did not have to be locked up. The next day, we put Pinky and Honey back in the smaller pasture, and they were coming up the driveway quicker than last time. We put the bucks in the smaller pen, and the does got the bucks' permanent pasture. The day the kids were born they weren't drinking enough for the amount of milk Jenny was producing. They drank a lot, but Jenny produced even more. We had to milk her the day the kids were born and twice the following day, making sure both kids were already full and leaving a good bit of milk. Now the kids seem to have caught up with the amount of milk Jenny is producing, because her udder isn't tight anymore. Next we had to name the kids. Jane named the one she had protected from Pinky Rosebud, and I named the one I found behind Jenny Dahlia, but we mostly call her Dollie. Dollie looks exactly like her mother, but Rosebud has white markings on her face and legs that she got from their sire, Ebony. Here are some pictures. The first two are Rosebud on the left and Doll on the right, and the last one is Doll on the left and Rose on the right. Written by Suzanne Tyler, Green T goatherd
The excitement is mounting here on the Green T, because our first ever kids are expected in 2 1/2 weeks! Jenny is getting really big around the middle and is more focused on eating than making sure Honey and Pinky stay off the spool. When we bred her to Eb back in October, we decided she actually wasn't bred because we saw no promising signs and later learned from a friend that Ebony might be to little, and thus need a platform. So we waited for her to go into heat again. This never happened and her belly and udder are getting bigger. Jenny is certainly pregnant. Here are some pictures. It is snowy out today. Ebony seems to have toughened little Binky up. Whenever we put him with his sister in the doe pasture he gets all tough and tries to fight Jenny and Honey. Here are some pictures of Binky trying to fight Honey. Here are some pictures of Binky and Ebony. And here is one of Binky getting held. Binky just loves to be held. Honey is now weaned and is best buds with Pinky. Unlike Binky, Pinky does not like to be held. Here are pictures of Honey and Pinky. By Suzanne Tyler, a contributor to the Green T blog
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Hello!We are a family of eight living on twenty-two acres of land in North Carolina. We girls like to write about the times on the farm, and its a fun thing to do as there is alway something happening on the homestead! Archives
March 2020
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